


a little bit of sand left in the hourglass

by beanarie



Series: indisposition [3]
Category: Black Sails
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon Disabled Character, Heavy Angst, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Major Illness, Panic Attacks, background flinthamiltons - Freeform, background silvermadi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-12
Updated: 2019-06-12
Packaged: 2020-05-01 19:22:32
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,083
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19184074
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beanarie/pseuds/beanarie
Summary: James doesn't ask if Silver wishes he could return home. From the sound of his voice, he didn't need a plane ticket.





	a little bit of sand left in the hourglass

Somewhere on the cobalt blue spectrum between late night and early morning, James sits back on his haunches, giving up on trying to rub the ache from Silver's muscles because he had to stop and start over every time that tortured body was wracked by another bout of dry heaves. Silver is practically naked, in more ways than one, every inch of him either twitching or trembling, and he hasn't spoken in hours but every so often he'll whimper to prove there's someone in there. They're on the floor, inches away from a crumpled mess of bile-spotted clothing. Exhausted, depleted, done, James can only stroke this one spot on the back of Silver's neck as he thinks, _Please, please, please_.

_Please, please, please_.

By the time James has developed a cramp in his hand, Silver goes even quieter and still in sleep. Then, Max arrives. And then, and then James is crouched in his bathtub fully clothed, struggling to regulate his breathing. It takes longer than it should for him to get himself out; he keeps tripping on the sides of his long coat and the soles of his shoes fail to get purchase on the porcelain again and again. 

There's a soft knock at the door, a muffled question in the form of his name, and if he had anything in him at all he would burst into tears. He didn't expect anyone to be home and he doesn't know if he should have. He's lost all track of what day it is, what time it is, who is meant to be where and when. As he is manipulated by patient hands out of the toilet, out of his clothes, into the bed, he tries to exhale and it sounds like a sob. His chest is a fucking forest fire.

Miranda and Thomas refuse to let James drive himself home from Silver's from that day on. 

~

Good days are on the couch with music playing and intermittent conversation. Silver is half sitting up. He made his own tea and oatmeal earlier. 

"What are you looking at so intently?" James cranes his neck to get a decent view of Silver's tablet. Silver doesn't object or turn the tablet so James can't see the screen, which is tacit permission to keep intruding. 

"Solomontown, South Australia," James reads, taking in photos of desaturated single family homes and a beach with a bridge that looks like the roof of a barn. Silver slots into place against him, resting his head against James's chest as they continue to scroll. 

"Looks quiet," James observes. The silence has gone on long enough.

"My nan had brown skin. Deep brown, like that." Silver bounces his heel on the coffee table. "She'd wait outside in the dark and we'd have no idea she was there, then she'd click on this ancient torch." Silver snuggles closer with a sigh. "I haven't thought of her in... Fuck. Long time. But right now, I can tell you on which fingers she'd chipped her nail polish the last time I saw her."

James doesn't ask if Silver wishes he could return home. From the sound of his voice, he didn't need a plane ticket.

Like clockwork, Max brings Anne exactly when expected. As Max putters about with the electric kettle and Anne raids the fridge for the Guinness she left the other day, James turns off the telly and seems to successfully swap his thigh for a pillow without waking Silver. When his phone rings, he answers without pausing to check the caller ID. Despite the technological advances of the last few decades, Thomas prefers more direct forms of communication.

"Normally I let my triple espresso escape, so to speak, using the Italian place downstairs," Thomas says. "Apparently they're closed for repairs of some sort. But I really do need to visit the toilet before we go."

It's three quarters of an hour to their townhouse from Silver's flat. That's with no traffic. James leans over and touches Silvers hair. "Hey. Thomas needs to come up for a minute." Silver mumbles something and curls up into a slightly tighter roll. Okay then. 

James buzzes Thomas in, hoping the noise will startle Silver and stop this from feeling like a violation. Silver doesn't stir. Thomas gives a friendly nod to Max and Anne, who greet him in kind, then James points him in the right direction and he flies to his reason for being there. James takes the opportunity to fill Max in on the events of the night, as they do. He doesn't mention the town or the grandmother. If Silver wants her to know, he'll tell her himself. He very well could have already.

Suddenly they all hear a familiar struggle, the repeated jerking of a doorknob. Anne rises from the table, leaving her Guinness behind. "Getting that sorted once and for all," she announces, and takes off toward the toilet.

"My hero," Max says. Circling around to the other side of the table, she shares a quiet smile with James and steals a few sips of Guinness. 

Thomas is freed from his temporary prison, looking off-kilter and unsure what to do with his body, until James says, "It's been doing that for ages. I should've warned you." Then he settles somewhat.

Thomas nods as he gazes around the flat, freezing unmistakably as he reaches the slight form on the couch. "Hm," he says, and makes a hard quarter turn as though something uniquely fascinating just occurred in the kitchen.

Just then, Silver's eyes crack open to reveal a sliver of blue irises. Only for a moment, but James sees it.

James shakes out a blanket over Silver and places a glass of water within reach on the coffee table. He squeezes one bony shoulder.

"Right," Thomas whispers. "Shall we?"

~

It is a Tuesday. Thomas is ironing tomorrow's trousers, Miranda is on the sofa loudly sharing the most ludicrous plot developments from the soap opera she’s catching up on, and James receives a text from Silver’s number, cryptic enough that he forgets his go-to reactions of late.

_426 Florham Park Road_

_He has an appointment in the morning and I can’t take him. Be here by 10:00 AM._

_-M_

Surprises abound once James arrives at the address.

“You are not Max,” he says, blinking slowly.

“This is true.” Madi’s eyes twinkle in defiance of her inscrutable expression. She rises from her rocking chair, skirt swaying, and takes his hand. “Hello, Flint.”

Someone approaches from behind. James turns his head in time to catch Joshua’s greeting half-smile. A good-natured cacophony spills outside when James's former crew-member crosses the porch and lets himself in through the front door. Madi has always been surrounded by activity, community, the entire time he’s known her. It’s good to know that some things have not changed. 

“How are your parents?” James asks.

“Busy,” she says. Far from a dismissal, her words are oddly reassuring.

“Oh?” he says. “I could possibly...” The sentence dies for want of an ending.

She smiles like she didn't notice he failed to convey his point. “I’d like that,” she says. “Very much.”

Not long after they exchange numbers, Silver hobbles out. Reduced to blinking yet again, James struggles to remember the last time he saw Silver walk. The leg stopped fitting properly ages ago and had begun rubbing raw patches on his stump that led to infections. Most days he’s been too unsteady for crutches. Madi doesn’t say a word to Silver; instead they sort of hook their index fingers together then let go.

“Sorry I’m late,” James says, as they shuffle to the car. “Got turned around a few miles back. What time are you expected?”

“Yesterday, actually,” Silver says, and the temperature seems to fall ten degrees. “Madi was just being graceful about kicking me out of her house.”

Drops of anxiety have been accumulating in a puddle in the pit of James’s stomach. Something is happening and he is horribly convinced he knows what it is. “Have you been here before,” James asks, as neutrally as a person is capable of speaking. 

Silver’s only reply is a shrug. James gives up to watch the road.

“That meet with the oncologist," Silver begins. "They’re thinking...” 

“Hm?”

“I may actually still be alive in a few years.”

“Fucking hell.” James jerks the wheel quickly and gets them back into the correct lane, amid the liberal use of the horn from the car behind them. “How many road accidents are you trying to get me into!”

“Sorry.” In Silver's expression is genuine remorse and delayed shock. Like the car hit him, or like he was locked inside for more than twenty four hours and forgot how it felt to have the sun blazing overhead. “Had to force myself to stop picking my moment and just come out with it. It wasn’t going to feel real until I told you.”

“Hi,” Silver says, at which point James realizes he hasn’t spoken. Silver’s eyes are still slightly wild.

James adjusts his grip on the steering wheel so his fingers don't hurt anymore. “So what you’re saying is, I’m stuck with you.”

“Until it comes back somewhere else,” Silver says breezily. James nearly punches through his window. “But there must be a chance it won’t. All these rounds of chemo, I’m rather like that urine-soaked shark.”

“What.”

“You know, miserable, but impervious.” He curls his hands into fists and holds them up like wiggling binoculars. “Poor bastards live up to half a millennium, tiny fish eating their eyes for eternity.”

James lets his smile morph into something that never failed to make men squirm, and he feels no small amount of satisfaction to see it work on Silver now.

“You just remembered that I owe you,” Silver says, shock making a transition to mild panic. It's the look of a man who never forgot he fucked up, yet is only just beginning to conceive of putting effort into something beyond surviving one more day.

“Oh, that," James acknowledges. A series of discussions for another time. “Yes. But also. You’re going to meet Thomas properly at some point.” It’s simply inevitable.

Instantly, ridiculously, Silver shrinks away, trying to become one with the passenger-side door. “I lied, as I am wont to do. They said I have two days. Hours. I’ll be dead by lunch.”

James shakes his head. “You’ll both be absolutely insufferable. I should invite Madi.”

“Give me until the end of this next round, for pity’s sake.”

“How much longer then?”

“Three months?”

James envisions three neatly printed pages from a calendar. It seems a neat, quantifiable, reachable destination in time. “Three months, and then you’re free.”

“Then the world is free, to quit treating me like a Ming fucking vase.”

James pulls over and takes off his seatbelt. Prognosis aside, Silver looks like a Ming vase. By all appearances, this body would crumble to powder if anyone so much as looked at it wrong. But appearances never tell the whole story. James strokes Silver’s cheek and pulls him in for a kiss, then a second. As they hold each other, it's impossible to tell which one of them is shaking. 

“Watch.” Silver huffs out a ragged-sounding laugh that James can feel against his neck. “I’ll fall on the stairs and break my neck tomorrow.”

One more of these remarks and James will kill Silver himself. “A foregone conclusion if you keep wearing that leg without getting it readjusted.”

“I didn’t know if I could get around in Madi’s house.” Silver bites his lip and glances at James, as though to apologize for being misleading earlier. "It felt vitally important she see why I haven't been around, and that I'd soon change that, if she let me."

"Something tells me she'll be willing to give you another chance," James says. Experience, perhaps.

Silver looks down at his thumb running lightly over the back of James's hand. "I love you."

The confession comes out of nowhere. Silver hasn't said it since, well, since. Not in those words. _You bloody well better_ , James thinks. _After all this?_ He hears Silver's breath catch.

"I think... I could do better at this, now." Silver laces their fingers together and looks up. "Not much benefit in being a fucking coward, is there?"

James opens his mouth. "It's never done shit for m-" Silver captures it, like it was his all along, and no one cares that James never finishes his sentence.

**Author's Note:**

> the boys get a happy ending because fuck cancer.
> 
> solomontown is a real place located next to a small city i passed through years ago. port pirie was originally going to be silver's hometown because the name always stuck with me. then i saw the list of suburbs and OH, hi.


End file.
